UPDATE: Bastardi doubles down on his anti-science BS in the comments — but then why won’t he put his money where his mouth is? That suggests this is just disinformation he doesn’t believe — see the bets I offered here (which he rejected).

“Completely wrong.” “Simply ignorant.” “Scientifically incorrect.” “Utter Nonsense.” “Very odd.” These are words scientists have used in the past to describe the nationally televised ramblings of weather forecaster Joe Bastardi, who Fox News hosts from time to time in an apparent effort to dismantle whatever its viewers might know about physics.

When we last saw Joe, he was breaking the news that the world’s climate scientists had overlooked the first law of thermodynamics. (He was wrong.) After athoroughroundofmockery in the blogosphere, we thought surely Fox would throw away Bastardi’s phone number. But here he is on Fox Business this morning, declaring that carbon dioxide “literally cannot cause global warming”:

BASTARDI: CO2 cannot cause global warming. I’ll tell you why. It doesn’t mix well with the atmosphere, for one. For two, its specific gravity is 1 1/2 times that of the rest of the atmosphere. It heats and cools much quicker. Its radiative processes are much different. So it cannot — it literally cannot cause global warming.

Asked about Bastardi’s statements, Kerry Emanuel of MIT said: “Utter rubbish. Sorry to be so direct, but that is just the case.” NASA climatologist Gavin Schmidt added: “Bastardi is attempting to throw out 150 years of physics.” “He seems very confused,” said physicist Richard Muller.

Bastardi may be hoping that when delivered confidently, terms like “specific gravity” and “radiative processes” can convince Fox’s viewers that he knows what he’s talking about. But don’t be fooled; he is again garbling the very basics of climate science. Schmidt explained:

Bastardi doesn’t understand the first thing about the greenhouse effect – it has absolutely nothing to do with the ‘specific gravity’ of CO2 or any other greenhouse gas, it has to do with the fact that GHGs absorb and radiate infra-red heat and in doing so warm the surface of the Earth.

If it weren’t for the natural greenhouse effect, we wouldn’t even be here to argue about climate change — it keeps the planet warm enough for life to thrive. Greenhouse gases trap heat that would otherwise escape to space and leave behind a big cold rock like Mars. While water vapor is the greenhouse gas that contributes the most to the natural greenhouse effect, CO2 drives the recent changes to Earth’s energy balance and temperature. As we substantially increase the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere, the greenhouse effect is enhanced, causing warming. The rise in temperatures sets off several feedback processes, including increased water vapor, that boost the warming further.

According to Bastardi, because CO2 is heavier than other gases in the air, it isn’t well-mixed through the atmosphere and can’t cause warming. In fact, we know CO2 is well-mixed because scientists measure it from different locations. Muller said CO2 is “completely mixed in the troposphere by turbulence,” adding, “I think he may be confusing CO2 with water vapor, which (because it freezes out) does not mix well.” The ability of CO2 to absorb and radiate heat was observed over 150 years ago and has repeatedly been measuredsince.

Bastardi went on to claim that “the entire globe has cooled quite a bit.” You be the judge:

Jocelyn Fong is a researcher with Media Matters for America. This piece was originally published at Media Matters.

Hard to believe that video. I thought I read somewhere that Joe Bastardi had some sort of post-secondary qualification in meteorology. His alma mater would be one school to avoid.

I find it interesting that Joe Bastardi is telling Fox viewers that he thinks that Chinese scientists have it right and USA scientists, NASA etc have it all wrong! I wonder to which Chinese study he is referring?

Joe is a joke, of course. That didn’t stop Dot Earth of the New York Times from featuring him on a post, and keeping a straight face about it, too. The comments section was flooded with his supporters. A person who didn’t know any better would have come out saying “A ha! I knew those scientists were lying”.

What I take away from this is the extreme moral necessity of ending our relationship with dishonest/discredited media. Since most of them haven’t given real attention to the climate, they need to be deleted from our bookmarks. The quality of the blogosphere is sufficient to handle our needs.

He claims that the world has been cooling for the last three years. Nevermind that 2010 was the hottest year in recorded history. Even if the cooling claim was true, three years is far too short a period to claim that it represents a trend.

I keep seeing the deniers making the claim that since we only have 150 years of direct measurements, and the Earth is 4.5 billion years old, we don’t have enough data to establish with certainty what is actually going on. Then they claim that only three years of data are enough to establish a new climate trend. But the three years of data don’t even show any hint of a change in trend. Maximum heavy-duty head vises required.

By reconfiguring the dilithium crystals to a different harmonic frequency we can produce a positron beam that wil alter the space time continuum and create a quantum singularity that will destroy the Borg vessel.

Oh, JB is always good for a laugh. Or he would be if so many of the gullible weren’t so easily swayed by his (mis)use of terms like “specific gravity” and “radiative processes”; the man is held in very high regard in denialist circles.

I am at turns both awed and dismayed–sometimes simultaneously–at his ability to make one unapologetically wrong weather or climate forecast after another. Though I think I have him figured out. The comedian Robin Williams once said that he developed his own rapid-fire delivery because he knew that by the time the audience would realize one joke was a stinker, he’d already be on to the next one. And I think that’s how Bastardi practices forecasting; promise the denialists that the global cooldown will begin next month, for instance, but by the time next month arrives and that cooldown fails to materialize, begin promising that it will happen next month so they’ll forget all about this month’s failure.

Well, that’s my theory.

Anyway, JB’s March 2 tweet about the whole Limbaugh/Sandra Fluke thing pretty much tells someone all they need to know about his mindset and character: “Heard male applications to Georgetown are going through the roof.”

But what are we supposed to tell people when they repeat this stuff? That temperatures have leveled off despite the huge increase in emissions from China etc? Please don’t tell me to say aerosols, my coworkers just laughed at me when I tried that! :(

that if they believe Bastardi’s nonsense, we should have been intoxicated by CO2 at ground level ? That it’s highly time for them to switch on what they have between the ears for a few seconds instead of swallowing such stupidities ?
And if they try to switch to something else, stop them at once and say that it’s not because you don’t believe in global warming that you shouls endorse such stupidity. It is a mere intellectual decency matter.

and look at this, the direct correlation of global temps to the flip in the PDO 3 years ago

policlimate.com/climate/cfsr_t2m_2011.png

We can go on and on and on, by why do so. Sheep have no ability to think on their own, but blindly follow along

You dont have a leg to stand on. The disconnect to c02 is obvious and its YOU AND YOUR ILK that are in denial

The major drop in mid tropospheric temps to record cold levels, at precisely the level the IPCC says that we are supposed to have trapping hot spots is the nail in the coffin. When one turns a thermostat down in the house, the first thing that cools is the air in the house, THEN THE SURFACES. The great thermostat of the earth is the tropical pacific and IF YOU ACTUALLY KNEW ANYTHING ABOUT HOW THE ATMOSPHERE WORKS you would understand that a 1 degree drop in tropical water temps offsets a 20 degree rise in the arctic temps, even more, based on the energy considerations of saturated warm air, and cold dry air. The turn to the cold PDO and the La Ninas that are becoming common ( yet another debacle from the IPCC, the idea we would be in constant el ninos and by the way, there will be a weak el nino later this year leading to a more severe winter next year in the US, which you will then blame global warming for) are consistent with climate cycle theory and the cooling that results. By the way have you taken a look at TOTAL GLOBAL SEA ICE? Of course not, its right on top of normal.
Here is my next forecast for you Joey boy, although Dr Gray made it years ago. When this is all done, this will go down as one of the greatest hoaxes of all time.

Lets see if you have the guts to let your readers read the
co2 ideas above. The only regret I have is that I did not use this argument earlier.

The jig is up, You should move to some other save the planet cause, because lord knows there are plenty of them out there that are worthy of attention. This is not one of them, and I suspect you and your ilk know it.

This ties in very nicely with my amazon.com review of Dr. Mann’s new book, “The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars…”. I gave my review the title “Attack of the C-Students” to honor the scientific qualifications and achievements of the global-warming denial community.

I’d also like to encourage those here who have read “The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars…” to post amazon.com reviews of their own (time permitting, of course).

If you don’t have the time to post a full-up review, go ahead and post a few quick “setting the record straight” comments in response to negative reviews, or at least vote up/down the reviews based on whether you think that the reviewers actually read Dr. Mann’s book.

Deniers have left quite a few “turds” in the punch-bowl over at amazon.com — so any efforts to raise the “punch to turd” ratio would be most appreciated!

Just went on over to weatherbell.com (Bastardi’s employer). Another well-known and scientifically incompetent denier, Joseph D’Aleo, is also employed by Weatherbell. (One of D’Aleo’s claims to fame is his thoroughly-debunked “dropped stations” attack on the NASA/GISS surface temperature calculations — consult Google for the ugly details).

That got me to wondering who Weatherbell’s clients really are. I wouldn’t surprised to see a John-Mashey-style investigating turn up a well-laundered Koch “wingnut welfare” funding stream… I can’t imagine anyone paying “serious money” to hacks like Bastardi and D’Aleo.

You didn’t really think Fox would “throw away Bastardi’s phone number” did you? Ollie North devised the plan that diverted proceeds of arms sales to Iran to support central American death squads. North was convicted of three felonies in the affair, but Fox treats the scumbag like a war hero.

You really should stop making even a token pretense that Fox is anything but a propaganda mill.

Dr. Richard Alley at Penn State should use your material on his exams.

In particular, he should ask students to critique this statement of yours:

CO2 cannot cause global warming. I’ll tell you why. It doesn’t mix well with the atmosphere, for one. For two, its specific gravity is 1 1/2 times that of the rest of the atmosphere. It heats and cools much quicker. Its radiative processes are much different. So it cannot — it literally cannot cause global warming.

It would be a great way for Dr. Alley to guarantee that the grading-curve starts above “0”.

Can you confirm that you said the following, and if so please can you elaborate?

“CO2 cannot cause global warming. I’ll tell you why. It doesn’t mix well with the atmosphere, for one. For two, its specific gravity is 1 1/2 times that of the rest of the atmosphere. It heats and cools much quicker. Its radiative processes are much different. So it cannot — it literally cannot cause global warming.”

I should add that a succinct response will be quoted verbatim, as I like to do that with anyone I quote, to be fair to them.

Thanks, in advance. You should know that I may use your argument against your stance elsewhere online, but I will endeavour to be fair.

Joe B.: Very good to see you over here to defend your climate views. If you could just write that all up on a cohesive peer reviewed paper you are shoe in for a Nobel! However, before you go there, I would like to ask, since CO2 is not mixing with the atmosphere as you state and yet cars, trucks, coal plants, etc. all clearly produce CO2 at enormous amounts, just how deep would a lethal concentration of CO2 now be on the earth’s surface given past discharges? I am sure at least some on this site could help with the math. A quick “Google” search and I could even help and would happily contribute. Surely the CO2 would at least be killing lots of folks in subways, underpasses, valleys, boat bilges, and more, it would appear to me something is amiss in your rational. Or my thinking lacks enlightenment. Help…

P.S. I do understand that opening a garage door before starting and running my car or forced ventilation of mine shafts and subways does appear to hold promise.

Just asking, if it’s the true one I won’t even bother to read him : when someone is slaughtering basic physics in the most ridiculous manner, the chances he’s going one day to say something meaningful are nil. I prefer instead read the other commenters who will get for me the most hilarious parts.
Yup, I’m lazy as hell :]

Really? That’s your offering on the physics of the greenhouse effect? An incoherent smattering of misapplied equations making broad, general (and wrong) assertions is your basis for the stupid comments?

Joe (Romm),

Can you confirm that this clown is really Bastardi and not someone’s sock puppet?

“Additionally, carbon dioxide cannot trap heat because it takes only 5 milliseconds to dissipate its acquired energy into heat sinks; that is, into outer space.”
CO2 molecules of the atmosphere are all alone in the space instead of being with other molecules constituting, well, an atmosphere.
Either that or CO2 molecules are utterly racist and prefer send back the trapped heat to the outer space instead of sharing it with *alien* molecules. Hey, those N2 molecules are not like us, they are diatomic and they don’t have double bonds ! Obviously they will take the poor CO2 molecules in a backalley to murder them, and they *dare* to try and take the heat collected by CO2’s honest and hard work ??

kthxbye.

Is this guy a real weatherman, or did he get his diploma in a Kinder egg ?

The sun is awakening and La Nina is weakening. How long before we hear global warming stopped in 2012?

With such a prolonged solar minimum and what was a deep La Nina, we should be freezing our butts off globally. Yet we get near record global temperatures. Isn’t anyone else at least a little scared as to what a solar maximum, strongish El Nino will bring?

As for us being Joe’s Sheep, I think you will find I have disagreed with him many times. Furthermore many others have suggested he look into various issues, which he very often does.

JR’s opinion does change as the evidence comes in unlike JB who now has to deny fairly basic physics.

Bastardi sounds no different than a seeming infinity of oblivious chumps at WUWT, ClimateDepot and other such seething pots of anger and confusion.

Stuck caps-lock key, spluttering anger, the whole deal is there, still one taco shy of a combination plate.

Apparently Fox would have no problem with yanking any of the plethora of dullards from WUWT, clipping a mic to ‘em and letting them proceed to engage in abject self-humiliation before an audience of millions. The “Gong Show” but with no gong.

(FYI, I’m considering doing two awards, the Geocronium for individuals and the Zodiacon (explained in the above post) for organizations. Everyone gets exactly one guess who’s like to get that second one.)

Having just finished reading my paper copy which arrived yesterday (had it on pre-order too), except for picking up on Notes and citations, I now feel that I can pitch in, but at A.co.uk rather than .com.

Wegman should be toast and so should Dick Lindzen after his recent performance in London, see RealClimate and SkepticalScience for more on that latter.

Did a bit of Googling of the WeatherBell staff — looks like a little nest of deniers there. In addition to Bastardi and D’Aleo, there’s this dude (courtesy of WUWT):

Alan Lammey, Texas Energy Analyst, Houston

Four scientists, four scenarios, four more or less similar conclusions without actually saying it outright — the global warming trend is done, and a cooling trend is about to kick in. The implication: Future energy price response is likely to be significant.

My question is, who in their right mind would actually pay for forecasting products produced by these guys? It would be really interesting to know who WeatherBell’s “clients” are…

My wild speculation is that WeatherBell is just one of the many “front organizations” (funded by right-wing foundations) designed to give deniers like Bastardi, etc. the imprimatur of credibility and authority.

yeah, last time I was out in the Mojave Desert on a windless morning the carbon dioxide was collecting on the ground near my tent. But just then the wind came up and saved my life since the breathing rate in humans is dependent upon the level of carbon dioxide in the blood (and not oxygen) I was panting like a labrador retriever!

I’ve heard the same thing from a lot of uneducated folks in the South. I was in Alabama and one guy there tried to tell me about the oil in Santa Barbara, Ca. He’s never been there, but when I told him it was mostly asphalt and not oil that can be cracked and made into gasoline he told me it was 70% light crude! Asphalt is worth a lot of money but the refineries in Santa Barbara are few and one of the most beautiful places on the coast has a moth-balled facility that was built out of shear chutzpah. I was used for a couple of years then put out of service, just down from Gaviota, Ca.

I didn’t stay in Alabama for long… I wasn’t over-weight, conservative, nor was I christian so I was a suspect… I’d like to know how he knew about Santa Barbara’s light crude. I lived there and worked in the ocean for thirty years and it came up from the depths in seeps, distilled and evaporated, then sank to the sea floor since it was so heavy or was blown onto the beach before separating into components. Isla Vista, near UCSB, had black carpets in the apartments close to the beach!

Bastardi’s livelihood is and has been based on his ability to understand and predict the weather to such an extent that the largest companies trust his judgements to make them, not lose them, significant sums. No other reason. No one propounding CAGW can nor does make a similar claim. He’s not evil or non-evil. He gets paid, and feeds his family, solely based on whether he’s right or wrong.

CO2insanity indeed! But I have a problem understanding two points:
1) “But one other important fact often glossed over is that CO2 comprises a tiny 0.4% [sic] of all the gases above our heads.” But – with LSD I get very significant effects even at 1ppm, i.e. 0.0001% (250µg LSD in 250g H20 – never try that outside clinic!).
2) “When applying the GHE formula devised by Arrhenius, IPCC scientists appear to have forgotten that we must consider the proportion of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, not the proportion of the whole mixture of gases.” I’m kinda stuck parsing this – isn’t that all the same?

If he’s right on this one, which is a CLIMATE call rather than a weather call, then an Insurance or Reinsurance Company has a once-in-a-lifetime chance to make HUUUUUUGE amounts of money by going against the conventional wisdom. Just charge a bit less than the market for large amounts of the risk associated with those products where the premiums are rising due to Climate Change fears.

If no-one’s putting their money on the table in this fashion, then we can take this side of Mr Bastardi’s repertoire with a pinch of salt regardless of how good he might be at WEATHER forecasting.

Regarding these hyper-deniers like Bastardi (and those couple of crank [crackpot] physicists G. Gerlich and R. D. Tscheuschner that Bastardi and the rest rely on) who deny the physics of greenhouse gases so much that they say that the CO2 on Venus is not the main cause of the extreme heat on Venus: The best way to deal with them and their hyper-denial is to simply point out what the scientists who are the darlings of the mainstream denier community say about this, these scientists/darlings being Svensmark, Spencer, Lindzen, Pielke, Curry, you name him/her. They say in essence that these hyper-deniers are cranks (crackpots) on the order of being the Flat-Earthers of physics.

(What deniers say about the extreme heat on Venus is a good litmus test for where they are on the denier continuum. And keep in mind that cranks [crackpots] exist in every field, including physics. I once met a PhD in physics who believed in perpetual motion machines.)

To see that they most certainly do think that this hyper-denial is truly on the order of Flat-Earther talk, here is a sample:

judithcurry.com/2011/10/15/letter-to-the-dragon-slayers/
[See all the many linked-to pages in this letter. Judith Curry says, “IMO, this group has damaged the credibility of skepticism about climate change and provides a convenient target when people want to refer to “deniers” and crackpots.”]

Side note: In spite of what you may have heard, that infamous CO2-denying Gerlich and Tscheuschner paper was not published as a peer-reviewed paper. It was published as a so-called review article in that peer-reviewed journal. (Peer-reviewed journals many times publish in separate sections articles that are not refereed as research papers before publishing, which is what it means to be published as a peer-reviewed paper.)

To see lists of formal published rebuttals and other rebuttals of that G&T crankery (crackpot-ism):

Based in New York City, WeatherBell Analytics LLC will offer meteorological products and services geared toward helping businesses manage weather risk. The company is funded entirely by angel investors.

That whole Co2Sanity blog post you link to refers to two false “climate science experts”: Dr Timothy Ball is not and never has been a ‘a climate scientist. He was a Professor in Geography at the University of Winnipeg and he has not published any peer-reviewed paper on climate science in the past 26 years.

Then there’s Professor’Nasif Nahle who, contrary to what is stated about him on other ‘not-so-skeptic’ blogs, is not a professor in climate sciences but was a professor in biology at the University Regiomontana in Monterrey, Mexico. That university does not have a specific faculty of biology and Nahle’s lectures were limited to specific biology related courses, not biology as a whole.

According to his own CV, he only lectured for 12 years until 1986 so it is pretty safe to say that Nahle has not been nor currently is an eminent biology professor.

Besides his 12 years of lectures, his only other science related occupation is that of owner and ‘scientific advisor’ of the site http://www.biocab.org/index.html where he publishes his own ‘peer-reviewed’ papers and one does not need to be an Einstein to know just who does this ‘peer-reviewing’.

Yet despite Mr Ball’s and particularly Mr Nahle’s complete lack of climate science background and publication history, you and others continuously put all your denier faith in these charlatans when their lack of scientific qualifications and expertise should make the alarm bells ring for even the mildest of real skeptics.

I have yet to see any of the EssoKoch’s assistant shower coaches like Bastardi and Marc ‘whistlesucker’ Morano actually predict anything with PDO, La Ninas, El Ninos, or even sunspots as proof of their level of expertise. How could he miss a chance on the heels of an X5.4 a few days ago? “Meterologists like Accuweather’s Joe Bastardi … sunspots play a role in warming Earth’s climate” (“CBS Highlights Meteorologists Who Doubt Human Activity Causing Global Warming”; By Brad ‘corporate bj’ Wilmouth, a phony news analyst at another extremist Media Research Center at newsbusters.org, 5/16/10). A couple of nights ago George ‘payola’ Noory had on Mitch Battros who claimed the solar flares would cause all sorts of general things like volcanoes and earthquakes. Mitch and George can now claim a correct prediction if USGS’s website stays up and collect a nice check from Rick Santorum’s superpac for crowding out any facts.

If we believed Bastardi’s nonsense every basement, root cellar, mine shaft, subway, automobile tunnel and bilge would be death traps an hour after powered fans stopped working.

Even propane gas, which is significantly heavier than air is safe to use in warehouses. If you fill a vertical pipe with propane by pouring from the top it’s all gone a half hour later unless you cap it.

You do realize that vertical gradients in temperature, pressure, CO₂ mole fractions, etc. have been taken into account in climate models of various degrees of sophistication for quite some time, right? The concentration gradient of CO₂, for example, has been measured by real scientists in this paper:

where they reproduce and extend in situ measurements taken by aircraft. Your pathetic “argument”, like the “arguments” of so many other pathetic deniers, is rendered moot by measurements that already reported in the scientific literature. What you’ll see in the linked paper is the seasonally varying, ever rising, CO₂ concentrations as the CO₂ is mixed all the way up to beginning of the stratosphere (18 km) – an altitude beneath which more than 90% of the mass of the entire atmosphere is contained. What you’ll also see in the paper linked are error bars – you know, what real scientists use to reveal the precision of their measurements.

You see, your so-called “argument” is empirically, demonstrably, wrong and it has known to be wrong by real scientists for a long, long, time.

They mysterious Nasif Nahle is actually a Mexican biologist. Who doesn’t look to a biologist who has never published anything in a climate journal to contradict 100 years of radiative physics?!http://www.biocab.org/Academic_Curriculum.html

It doesn’t really matter–except, I suppose, at Heaven’s gate. (Father, forgive him for he knew not what suffering he was causing.)

Bastardi’s got a bit part in a very well-orchestrated, well-financed denial machine that’s designed to preserve the very profitable status quo of the machine’s (0.0001%)backers for as long as possible.

What’s sad is that the human death toll from all this rises with each passing day. In fact it’s proportional to the denial.

In another, more astute world, what JB and his backers are doing would be illegal. For now they must live with their moral crimes.

My prediction: we’ll be doing too much such debating and too little action to escape our apparent fate right up until it’s too late.

“The energy density of the quantum/wave is lower at higher altitudes than at the surface level in the finite moment that the quantum/wave is emitted. Therefore, the photons emitted by carbon dioxide suffer a redshift that takes them into a continuous decreasing of their energy density each time they are absorbed and emitted towards systems of different species.”

I admit I only have a PhD in physics and 40 years of experience basis to work from, but this is absolute nonsense. No wonder if this is the kind of stuff Bastardi is working from he is so uninformed/misinformed and ignorant of the science.

My biologist friends, even though they were not that fond of physics, wouldn’t even approach such a level in basic ignorance. Something called “common sense” would go in their way, even though this common sense must be low since they decided to study biology :]
(tongue-in-cheek pun to them).

Mr. Bastardi,
I’ll begin by stating that I couldn’t help but chuckle at your top-defence source being Dr. Ball, perhaps the least respected scientist in the field of climatology. Dr. Ball has produced, what, perhaps 4 papers within the last 25 years. He was also a professor of geography, not climatology. His writings are vague, and are often riddled with errors. Few practicing scientists take his views seriously.

In response to your comment of “Get someone that knows science to translate it for you”, I’ll give you a brief description of my credibility; a student in Canada’s University of Waterloo, studying under Dr. Ellsworth Ledrew and Dr. Dan Scott, respected scientists in the field of climatology, both. I am contributing to writing Transport Canada’s Climate Change Adaptation Strategy, and have recieved my acceptance to the University of Hamburg’s School of Integrated Climate System Sciences. My knowledge of climatology and atmospheric sciences is adequate to understand anything you put forth.

Your record cold tropospheric temperature comment is not true; it is well established that tropospheric temperatures are rising. Perhaps you were thinking of stratospheric temperatures? In that case, you would be absolutely right! The problem, that is in keeping with the global warming theory, since CO2 concentrations are largely retained in the troposphere. The stratosphere cools as a result of less heat escaping the troposphere

The most fundamental flaw to your “Joe Bastardi was correct” link provided was in your second line; “For the sake of argument, let’s assume those that believe CO2 is adding energy to the system are correct”. Increasing CO2 concentrations are not adding energy to the system, it is retaining it. The sun is the source of the energy. Your argument is roughly akin to claiming that wraping yourself in a blanket cannot cause your body temperature to warm because the blanket cannot create heat; but again, the blanket is not the source of the heat.

If your claim of 1 degree of tropical Pacific temperature change being capable of negating 20 degrees of Arctic temperature change approached something resembling truth, would the strong La Nina event of 2011 (in which deep water upwelling in the tropical Pacific off the Chilean/Peruvian coast drops the SST dramatically) not have restored Arctic sea ice extent to normal levels?

I hope you come to see the error of your ways; doubling down on your opinion while evidence stacks up against you does not lend you credibility. “When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?” – John Maynard Keynes

That same passage made my jaw drop on the floor. But then, I only have 30 years of experience since I earned a PhD in chemistry and 25 years since I started teaching the subject (including bits of IR spectroscopy) in a major research university. Most amazing of all, is the crudity of Fox that they will continue to interview this idiot as if he knows something about science. I don’t think this kind of clownish propaganda has been seen in any advanced country since the fall of the Soviet Union.

I’ll be over at Amazon.com when I finish the book (unlike many of the commenters there, I actually like to read a book before I comment on it). Based on the chapters I’ve read so far and a quick perusal of comments at Amazon, it seems that pretty much every “turd” in the punch bowl has come from someone who hasn’t read the book (colour me surprised).

Personally, I liked physics and ended up learning way more than I anticipated, as well as far more modelling and statistics than I ever imagined existed. Which is all good because it gives me the background to spot ignorance-based arguments, like Joe B’s truly puzzling divorce from reality and common sense. Surely he can’t really believe what he’s saying as it doesn’t even match with everyday observations??

You think the pockets of CO₂ are dangerous? Wait until you get trapped by an argon pocket! After all, there is 24 times as much of argon in the atmosphere as CO₂ and the specific gravity of argon is more than 90% that of CO₂ and 1.4 times that of the “rest of the atmosphere”!

That was my reaction when I first heard this as well — have to make sure that I bring enough oxygen tanks with me when I go to the beach (after all, who would want to pay the exorbitant fees that the cart vendors charge for 20 minutes of oxygen).

Let’s all head to the mountains because sea level air is so dangerous!

Since you likely have more money available than Romm, are you going to take him up on the bet offer? You don’t have to worry about the climate science cabal conniving to take away your money since this would be independently verifiable by any decent analytical organization / analyst using data sets agreed on by the two of you.

And, well, if you aren’t, then why even make a pretense of pretending that what you say makes any sense at all or merits being listened to?

by the way, the next hit on the co2 will be the debunking of the radiative feedback that co2 cant cause.
The greenhouse effect is well known, I understand it, its just that co2 is not a factor. If it were, than why is it going up and temperatures are not.

You are so far behind you have to look up to see bottom. The data says it all.

Why should anyone that is two laps ahead on a race bet on whether someone could beat him for a 50 yard stretch. Perhaps we will take you up.. but it will be for a lot more and you will have to recover the beating the actual data shows you have taken already.

And by the way, you will find that my co2 ideas are not my own, but are because people with as many phds as emmanuel or schmidt are pushing this. Or did you take out the link to the article so your readers can see what I am saying.

Very true, Daniel. I have to cringe everytime I see a “skeptic” say that, when there are still many so-called skeptics who do deny that the globe is even warming. I mean what is Anthony Watts’ surface station project trying to prove if he accepts the globe is warming, but just rejects that CO2 is the cause. It would seem the only objective of that project is to cast doubt on the fact that is warming — even though the warming is readily observable in numerous indicia far removed from any instrumental temperature record (e.g. phenology, loss of glacial mass, melting sea ice, rising sea levels, etc.).

The skeptics have so many different people making so many different arguments. The only common bond is a disdain for regulation and a desire to apparently facilitate catastrophic climate change. They just shoot whatever they can at the wall, and hope something sticks.

Even Dr. Roy Spencer, a prominent climate skeptic, has debunked JB’s silly argument that CO2 isn’t a greenhouse gas. He has said, in fact, that he believes it will cause warming, but apparently that the feedback loops showing enhanced warming are incorrect.

If he really believes this (or other skeptics like them), why do they never bother to rebut some of the more extreme pseudoscientific arguments thrown out by the likes of JB and others? Especially when those ideas are given national TV coverage.

Air is impervious to IR, so only the mass of CO2 is affected! Any such warmed CO2 is surrounded by 2,500 molecules of air which will conductively remove the extra energy, in about 20 milliseconds (see above two papers). Any air that is thus warmed will convect the energy to higher levels.
Besides the above, incoming solar radiation already hits the so-called “greenhouse gases” and by that action alone there is less solar radiation hitting the surface of the earth.
By all counts, so-called “greenhouse gases” cool the earth and the atmosphere. Only water vapor, by virtue of its heat capacity, can reduce the rate of cooling by the atmosphere, but the atmosphere cools the earth 24 hours a day. Only the rate of cooling is affected by water vapor. At no stage is extra energy created by any amount of so-called re-radiation or so-called back-radiation.

I know there are people out there that if they read this, they can understand this.

there is a wealth of information out there for those willing to look. If you dont wish to look, then nothing can be done for you.

All this has me wondering, what happened to the democratic party I knew when I was younger.. that actually stood for freedom of thought and deed, not simply blindly following along with closed minds and hearts. Its amazing that someone that actually shows you things that can challenge your thought, the very thing supposedly this party stood for when I was younger, is now demonized. You do the math as to what is right and what is rong

Every time you comment another layer of your ignorance is revealed. We’re on spring break at my university this week, so I felt OK about spending a few minutes showing your comments to my fellow chemistry professors. The two most common reactions were puzzlement (as in, “What the hell does he think he’s talking about?”) and unrestrained laughter. I was going to suggest that you take a course in physical chemistry, but you really need to go back and start with freshman chemistry.

Oh Joe, please stop… seriously, for your own sake. And in case you are wondering, you don’t get to use hindsight as a bet. If you think you are right, accept a bet for the FUTURE.
And also, in case you were wondering why your data kept looking different from the vast majority of climate scientists, its because it’s wrong. You incorrectly used climate model data with the observed temperature data. For examples of how it has been done correctly, please see:

WOW, Joe Bastardi has absolutely no clue about how infra red radiation is affected by molecules.

He said:

Air is impervious to IR

Impervious: Adjective:

Not allowing something to pass through; not penetrable

He has got it exactly backwards, it is CO2 (in high concentrations) which is impervious to IR. Oxygen and nitrogen allow complete and unrestricted passage of IR radiation. That is why CO2 is a greenhouse gas and oxygen and nitrogen are not.

The guy that Bastardi has been citing frequently in recent times has many “published” papers. The only problem is that they are published by him and him only, referencing papers mostly done by himself, and “published” directly to his various websites without any semblance of peer review. Some of this guy’s other “scientific” theories are fascinating too. Research him for a good laugh…

> “By all counts, so-called “greenhouse gases” cool the earth and the atmosphere. Only water vapor, by virtue of its heat capacity, can reduce the rate of cooling by the atmosphere, but the atmosphere cools the earth 24 hours a day.”

So Joe B., when we consider Venus, which is lacking in water vapor to heat it up, and which has plenty of CO2 to cool it down… shouldn’t that be quite a nice vacation spot compared to daytime Mercury?

There is actually a useful reply to this, yes it takes a short time for the CO2 which has absorbed a photon to lose that energy via collisions but that heats up the nearby air. On the other hand, CO2 molecules can be excited BY collisions with the nearby molecules.

The energy is quickly degenerated to thermal motion (translation, zipping about) via collisions. This process is called thermalization and requires about a microsecond at atmospheric pressure. So where does the emission come from the bunnies ask?

Well, there is a considerable amount of thermal energy at room temperature, and even much lower. True this average energy is low compared to even the lowest vibrational excitation of CO2 (which would be ~1000 K), but it is enough that a small, but significant fraction of the CO2 molecules are excited to levels which can emit in the IR (about 6% at room temperature).

Another often stated misconception is that CO2 is such a small fraction of the atmosphere that it cannot absorb or maintain any significant amount of energy. This is where Eli the wonder bunny has thought of a great answer:

Think of CO2 as a turnstile through which energy passes from the ground to the atmosphere. A large crowd can pass through a few turnstiles.

UPDATE: Upon reflection (and a pointed comment by one who does not wish to be named, always welcome at RR), this is even better than Eli thought. Having to go through turnstiles slows up rushing crowds. If the CO2 is playing the role of a turnstile, and the poor innocent photons have to get through a series of them it will really slow up the rate of emission to space.

To those who are taking pot-shots at Joe Bastardi, please think about this:

Imagine a clear day at noon. Your surroundings are illuminated by direct sunlight.

Further, imagine a mostly cloudy day at noon where your immediate surroundings are illuminated by a “hole” in the cloud deck (“clear” path to the sun for you).

Now, is your little patch of sunlight on the cloudy day any more bright than it is on a clear day?

Before you answer, remember that both Earth and the clouds have an albedo. That means that your patch of sunlight on a mostly cloudy day is being illuminated by both direct sunlight AND the a portion of the sunlight reflected back toward the sky that is, in turn reflected back by the cloud deck to your clear patch.

If greenhouse gas warming theory is correct, then the clear patch on a cloudy day should be brighter on the same basis used to claim weak “back radiated” IR can further excite (illuminate) the warmer Earth.

In the example above, substitute IR for the visual spectrum and greenhouse gases for the clouds. It should be obvious, then, that the greenhouse gas theory, based on the same physics as that which applies to the entire electromagnetic radiation spectrum, must apply to the visual spectrum. But it doesn’t and, indeed, the greenhouse gas warming theory is a fallacy because heat cannot be imparted from IR radiation of a lower intensity (cooler) impacting an Earth radiating in the IR at a higher intensity (warmer). You can’t just add the weak intensity IR to the stronger. To do so would violate the 2nd LAW (not theory) of thermodynamics.

Think about what is happening at the sub-atomic/atomic/molecular scales to understand how radiation reacts with materials to either illuminate them or warm them. A car traveling at 60 mph cannot be pushed any faster by a car going 10 mph.

The truly simplistic view is that just because there is some IR that is reradiated back toward Earth, that that weaker intensity IR can have a warming effect on the Earth.

Oops! It would appear that the true “flat earthers” in this issue are those who actually believe in the greenhouse gas warming theory (which, upon further review, is utter nonsense).

Bob darling, thou are kicking at the wrong door. The statement is that the surface would be colder in the absence of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Try that one not the rather strange peanut you are trying to push up the Bastardi.

Toby, this may help you understand how light and IR behave similarly, but not identically.

Some of the IR is “seen” by CO2 (and other “greenhouse” gases). That is, the gases will resonate (absorb and reradiate) outgoing IR originating from the “hotter” Earth surface. A small portion will be directed back toward Earth. The question becomes, then what happens?

Similarly, visible sunlight striking, for instance, a photographer’s Gray card, reflecting 18% of incident light. That “outbound” light (like the IR Earth’ surface emits) obeys the same laws of physics. Using a flat mirror, one can create a very efficient visible light version of “greenhouse gases” with respect to their impact on outgoing IR. The mirror, if held at an angle to the gray card so that it reflects the 18% reradiated sunlight back toward the gray card, acts as the greenhouse gases do in our atmosphere. What happens to the outgoing light from the gray card that is reflected back toward the gray card?

The situations are identical, except that the mirror is a much more efficient reflector (“back radiator”) than are greenhouse gases, so the effect should be more pronounced in the visible light example.

Perform the experiment. You will note that there is ZERO back-radiated light noted on the gray card (i.e., it gets no brighter).

Why? Because the atomic structure of the gray card material is excited to a much higher level by incoming sunlight than the “back-radiated” light from the mirror. You cannot just “add up” the light that way.

Same principle applies to the IR, greenhouse gases, back radiation of IR and the belief that the lower intensity IR coming back can further excite a surface emitting a higher-intensity IR.

These examples are consistent with the 2nd Law. The “greenhouse effect” is not.

I don’t have anything technical to add that the other commenters have said, but I have the need to just say it is difficult to believe that Bastardi is taken seriously even by the stooges at Fox. Just stunning. Impervious?!?!

Once upon a time I was tempted to argue with cranks like you here in the blogosphere, but my experience is that you’re no more receptive to learning how wrong you are than any garden variety creationist.

But why bother with us? If you are so certain of what your saying here, you really should write it up and submit it for publication. Support your ideas with real physics, not the smoke you’re blowing here. While you’re at it, explain the huge ‘hole’ in IR radiation emitted from earth in the region of CO₂ bending modes in the 600-700 cm⁻¹ region of the spectrum. Tell the world how the natural greenhouse effect all of us lesser scientists have been fooled into thinking is keeping the earth from freezing over is in fact bogus.

This is big stuff – submit to Science or Nature. I can’t wait to read about it in an upcoming issue.